


Silver Millenium Online

by u10a10jou



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Video Game AU, cassette futurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:21:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26178694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/u10a10jou/pseuds/u10a10jou
Summary: Usagi thinks about her life. She thinks of her lacklustre looks, her few and far between friends, her non-existent love life. Most of all her mind dwells on the hulking, looming prospect of facing her failing grades, and what that means for her future.“The world is changing Usagi”, her mom repeats in her head“maybe when I was a kid you could slack off and marry a good man, but the world is changing.”She can’t think about it without dread seeping into her bones, so instead she thinks of shining, beautiful Sailor V; flying through the air, defeating bad guys, surely anxiety and creeping fear doesn’t exist in her world.There’s a certain gravity in the room when she punches her screenname into the blocky keyboard, it makes her feel like there’s no universe in which she wouldn’t choose to be ‘Sailor_Moon’.Video Game au.
Relationships: Chiba Mamoru & Hino Rei, Chiba Mamoru/Tsukino Usagi, Hino Rei/Tsukino Usagi
Comments: 9
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Regular world video game au, the game and technology is heavily inspired by Sword Art Online, but without the death game stuff so my dumbass children can focus on hormones rather than, y'know, death. 
> 
> Trying to look at a more realistic take of a girl who has failing grades, eats too much and crys everyday.

On her slow walk home Usagi blankly stares at her test paper. She knows she isn’t stupid, she just _knows_ it, but she also knows that just breathing around her peers brings down the class average, and that her usual excuse of _‘if I really tried I’d get the best grades in class, so why care about this one test?’_ is wearing threadbare. Walking home and facing her mother is too much right now, between getting yelled at for what she knows, she knows it already, and losing herself in the new Sailor V game, until her mom’s so busy scolding her for coming home late that she doesn’t even think about Usagi’s grades, well. 

At least she’ll get to see Motoki today.

After she slots her 100¥ coin into the blocky arcade machine, it’s like a flip is switched in her brain. The flashing screen lights illuminate the furrow between her brows and her hard-set lips, this at least she can’t fail at. Usagi thinks she’d like to see Umino with his perfect English scores try to last more than a minute in her fast paced shooter, then immediately feels a little mean for the satisfaction of imagining him weep in frustration. With a singleminded focus that Ms Haruna would kill to see in math class, Usagi’s eyes follow her avatar across the screen, she can track the HP and ammo she has left while at the same time evaluating the cost-benefits of killing an enemy for loot or running away to give her more time on the harder levels, so why can’t she write an essay without her gaze flickering between the clock and the empty page, panic settling in her chest? 

\----------

It’s another hour of familiar in game routine before something wrong happens. 

While Usagi’s basking in the triumph of clearing level 20, the game offers her a bonus level. She’s gotten further than this without ever seeing a bonus round in-between levels, but if she can pick up some extra health potions before the gruelling level 21 then she’s not complaining. 

…The bonus level is _hard_.

The screen is full to the brim with flying enemies, they have surprisingly grotesque faces for the scant few pixels Sailor V can render, and they all have the same long range bullet hell attack that means its all Usagi can do to furiously mash buttons to dodge and run to the end of the level. An attack grazes her once, and takes her down to below half health, which is way too much damage for an enemy below level 40 to deal.

Shooting at the monsters kills them in one hit, but none of them are dropping items and Usagi’s used up all her potions she had saved for the next level, not to  
mention she’s almost out of ammo and the enemies are too far away to kill with melee attacks.

_‘I’m totally done for!’_ Her adrenaline riddled mind screams.

Towards the end of the level she feels like she’s performing an elaborate drumming performance, with how hard and fast she’s slapping the controls, Usagi’s hands sting from constantly staying _just_ out of reach of attacks, she’s so absorbed in staying alive that she hasn’t noticed the crowd gathered around her, watching with something akin to awe. A decisive twist of the joystick and a complicated sequence of buttons, and Usagi’s made it!

The crowd around her cheers almost as loudly as she does. It feels like the celebratory yelling lasts a lifetime, people are slapping her back and revelling in the intense gameplay they just witnessed, coming down from her adrenaline high it’s all Usagi can do to accept a congratulations from Motoki and sag in her seat. Of course, without any health items she dies in level 21 before she’s even halfway through, and the crowd disperses after that.

Yawning loudly, Usagi decides it’s a good time to call it quits, when, mid yawn, another weird thing happens. Instead of taking her to the scoreboard after her game over, there’s a large congratulations screen, apparently, she’s won a prize? Usagi absentmindedly jots the 16 digit code and phone number over her overdue Japanese lit. homework before waving goodbye to Motoki and tiredly dragging herself home.

\----------

It’s only two days later, when she’s asked to hand in her homework that Usagi even remembers about the phone number. After detention for missing her homework for the second time, she runs home and grabs the landline.

“Moshi moshi?” 

“Oh! Moshi moshi!” She didn’t plan this far ahead. “Um, you see I played Sailor V at the arcade a couple days ago and there was this wacko bonus level, and it gave me your phone number? Hehe…” 

Apparently with whatever context the phone lady had, this was a normal thing to say to someone. After confirming the code and Usagi’s address, the woman on the other end told her she’d won a brand new game fresh out of development, _Silver Millennium Online_ as well as her own personal home gaming system. 

Once she’d agreed to the various terms and conditions (although she’d blanked out while the lady droned on and on…) Usagi hung up the phone and jumped up and down a couple of times squealing, before racing up to her room and divebombing onto the bed. She was the most excited she'd been for a long time.

\----------

The screen is pretty close to her face, but her eyes are already adjusting. _‘Still, I bet if I keep this up, I’ll end up looking like a girl Umino’_ The thought makes her giggle and gag at the same time. Polite text onscreen asks her to pick a username. 

“Other people will see this name, so take care not to reveal personal information!” It reads.

Just putting her name in and being done with it is out Usagi supposes. Still, she’s already sunk this much time into wrapping her head around cutting edge computer technology, installing the bulky hardware, convincing her dad to get a modem for the house- _‘it’ll help me with schoolwork!’_ \- that she may as well put a little thought into this too. 

Usagi thinks about her life. She thinks of her lacklustre looks, her few and far between friends, her non-existent love life. Most of all her mind dwells on the hulking, looming prospect of facing her failing grades, and what that means for her future. _“The world is changing Usagi”_ , her mom repeats in her head _“maybe when I was a kid you could slack off and marry a good man, but things are changing.”_ She can’t think about it without dread seeping into her bones, so instead she thinks of shining, beautiful Sailor V; flying through the air, defeating bad guys, surely anxiety and creeping fear doesn’t exist in her world. 

There’s a certain gravity in the room when she punches her screenname into the blocky keyboard, it makes her feel like there’s no universe in which she wouldn’t choose to be ‘Sailor_Moon’.

\----------

Halfway through carefully considering her options in the character creation menu, (there are just too many sliders, she doesn’t really care about the specifics of her nose, but there’s the option to adjust it so there’s no way she’s not going to,) she hears her mom yell from downstairs.

“Usagi! Pause your game so I can use the phone!” 

_‘It doesn’t pause.’_ She thinks despairingly. 

Still, Usagi knows a losing battle when she sees one. “Okay Mama!” And just like that all her meticulous progress is lost. 

That night, after scarfing down dinner (and then scarfing down seconds because she’s a growing girl) Usagi settles on her back in bed and boots the NEOGEAR up, before settling the helmet over her head. In the few minutes it takes to turn on, she has one hundred percent decided on how her avatar should look. This time she flies through the menus, only paying the barest attention to the various details of her character and focusing on the bigger picture, until she reaches the class selection options. There are 12 different classes to choose from, but she has no idea what they mean in the context of the game, and the libraries’ closed this late in the evening, so she can’t run and look them up. In the end she randomly selects ‘Bard’ and hopes she hasn’t picked something too weird. Finally, the screen asks her to make a password to start the game, and now that she’s at the last hurdle she hastily inputs the first random string of words that comes into her head. 

“Moon Prism Power Makeup.” Even whispering it to herself, she knows for a fact it’s impossible to guess. 

Usagi presses enter, and blacks out.

\----------

The next day, after fearfully shoving the spiderwebbing wires, the heavy computer blocks and the helmet with the monitor into the corner of her room, Usagi runs to school and pretends the increasing distance from her and the NEOGEAR doesn’t lessen the tension in her body. School’s much the same, in history they go through a test paper the class did last week, and at the end of the period Usagi’s paper is drowning in red marking ink. After she and Naru eat lunch outside, Usagi naps behind her propped up math book. 

_Sailor_Moon is exactly as she had created her, long slender limbs, flowing golden hair, wide blue eyes._

_Everything feels gut wrenchingly incorrect._

_For a second, all she can perceive is the nauseating, reality bending feeling of wrongness that Usagi feels being in the wrong body. She’s too tall, her waist is too thin, and when she wildly looks around she’s terrified to see the reflection of a beautiful stranger looking right back at her. Her (delicate, dainty, wrong) fingers touch her face as if she’s afraid they’ll phase right through. What’s infinitely worse: Usagi feels soft skin, and the dissonance between what she sees in her reflection and what she feels in her fingertips makes her want to puke._

_“Let me out. Let me out!” When her shouts come out in female voice option no. 3 it scares her even more. Eventually, after much panicking and flailing, she manages to find the log out button._

Usagi wakes with a shout when Ms Haruna smacks her upside the head with a roll of classwork. She’s never been so happy to see algebra.

\----------

When she gets home, Usagi re-reads the NEOGEAR user manual. “Never seen before 3D immersive visuals at the forefront of gaming technology!” it boasts.  
Before bed, Usagi grabs a spare bedsheet from the linen closet and throws it over her exiled machine corner. 

\----------

The next morning Usagi’s eyes roam over her messy bedhead, her eye bags, her small 14 year old body. Without thinking she touches her fingertips to her cheek: her skin is rough. On her way home from school, she and Naru buy tonic, serum and moisturisers from a beauty store.

\----------

A week later, while she’s standing on a chair grabbing something from a top shelf in her room, she daydreams about how nice it’d be to have long legs. She can’t help the momentary glance at her NEOGEAR, covered by the bedsheet.

\----------

In the end it’s two weeks later, when Usagi’s at the arcade, grinding through the mid-tier levels of Sailor V, when she feels unsatisfied with the flat graphics and bored by the gameplay, that she finally cracks. She snaps up her schoolbag and sprints home in record speed, in no time Usagi’s pulled the dusty bedsheet off her computer, thrown herself onto bed and booted up the NEOGEAR.

“Moon Prisim Power Makeup!” She excitedly whispers before she presses enter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Usagi sees something cute.

Usagi regarded her newly materialised world with piercing blue eyes, looking around with slowly mounting panic for something to ground her. In her first scan of the area she saw rusty corrugated iron and huge grey warehouses, _‘The shipping district then,’_ she realised, _‘last time I was somewhere near the city centre,’_ but before she could examine her whereabouts further she felt a bout of nausea accompanying the syncing of her mind with her body.  
Usagi was a consumed by a sense of detachment, she felt like both an invisible floating puppeteer, and as if someone had chipped away at her bones to shape and polish her like a floppy wooden marionette. 

Almost without thinking, she began to shift. _‘Is this me moving these limbs,’_ Usagi pondered as she started to stroll through the maze of shipping containers. _‘or is this body moving of it’s own will, and I’m not a participant, only an observer?'_ She dragged her fingers along the rusted steel walls surrounding her, and felt the damp and grainy texture as if it were through a heavy quilt. On any other day, she’d have accepted this quirk of technology, but after weeks of neurotic avoidance of the game Usagi wanted to understand exactly what she’d let into her head.

 _‘If I decide I want to run headfirst into a wall, will it hurt? Will I be stopped if I try?’_ For a second, she considered that there was nothing to stop her from doing so, and felt a wave of what she could only describe as numbing despair settle inside her. With a joyless exhalation, she lowered herself back against a container with her arms drawn tightly around her knees and thunked her head back with eyelids screwed shut. 

After taking a moment to gather herself, Usagi uneasily opened her eyes, to find herself staring at two shiny pink marbles.

“KYAAAAA!” 

Unfurling her limbs and hurriedly scrambling away, Usagi looked at a creature perched on the edge of the shipping box with wide eyed disbelief. It was… almost cute. As if someone had taken a cat and a rabbit and shoved the best and creepiest parts of them into one small body. Usagi almost wanted to let it sniff her hand and pet it, if not for those empty and intelligent pink eyes that never left her own. 

As quick as it had appeared, it gracefully leapt down into the corridor between stacks of shipping containers and padded on all fours towards Usagi.

“Good kitty… rabbit… monstrosity…” 

Her back touched the wall behind her. She nervously shuffled and tried to make herself seem as friendly as possible, desperately hoping that perversions of nature didn’t carry rabies. 

The cat snarled and leapt atop her, knocking them both to the ground.

They wrestled on the ground for a few frantic minutes, Usagi yelling and trying to distance herself from the monster, while the cat, by no means moving with precision, evaded Usagi’s awkward swinging fists and jabbing elbows with ease, it was quick and as slippery as an eel. Wicked claws sliced into her cheeks and forehead and the pain was more visceral and real to Usagi than anything else in this wretched world. As the blood trickled down her chin, and the cat kept lunging at her, Usagi was forced to accept reality of her situation, where before she’d felt disconnected, she had now been shoved into the driver’s seat of her body. 

With a girlish scream Usagi kicked the cat in its middle, predictably sending it flying into the dirt. Blood thrummed though her veins as she scrambled to her feet, for once uncaring of the grime coating her face and the dirt caked under her nails, because while she didn’t feel precisely happy about any of these things, she felt distinctly alive. Alive and scared and reckless and wanting a fight, a screaming partner, a target to unleash all her wild and sharp frustration that had been wearing away at her the moment she’d entered this world for the first time. Usagi bared her teeth like a stray dog and kicked the disgusting creature again, she put all her weight into her heel and curb stomped it, she opened her mouth and violence overflowed between her teeth like a thick smoke. 

Only when the cat was a bloody mass of stained white fur did she slow down and begin to feel her ire cool. Luckily, before Usagi could confront the savagery of her actions, the cat emitted a soft golden light that swept over it’s messy wounds and partially melded its skin back together. Blood still trickling from it’s injuries, the cat stood on trembling little legs and fled through the alleyways between stacks of iron boxes. 

For a brief moment, Usagi did not speak and merely stood staring at the sticky clouts of congealing magical cat blood still staining her sneakers, splatters of it had even reached as far at the calves of her jeans.

Just as the situation was beginning to sink in, Usagi tried to console herself. It was all going to be alright she wilfully tried to believe, since this was a video game, and she didn’t actually hurt a real cat, so she in fact, wasn’t a scourge of the earth animal abuser, when her mind froze.

A game.

Usagi allowed herself a beat of stillness with an empty smile that said _‘Critical thinking. My one weakness.’_ , before pounding her head and yelling “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

With a tired huff, Usagi looked down at the mess of blood on the floor and decided she needed a change of scenery.  
___

Laid flat on her back atop one of the solid stacks of shipping crates, Usagi took a few deep breaths and watched the sunset. Finally, she yanked herself into a sitting position with determination.

“Alright! Lets figure out this stupid video game!”

It was the second time she’d ever tried to summon the menu, and with a wave of her hand it appeared in front of her, white, substanceless and following her line of vision, as if there were a movie projector behind Usagi’s eyes. She tapped her character icon.

_Sailor_Moon_  
_Level 1 Bard_  
_HP: 40/50_  
_MP: 10/10_  
_EXP: 0/100_

A picture of herself floated next to the jumble of letters and numbers. Interestingly, it showed her as she was, hair loose and wild, t-shirt damp with sweat, jeans and sneakers crusty with dried cat blood. 

“I lost HP? If I see that stupid cat again…!”

Still, Usagi had no idea what the other two abbreviations meant, but she could at least guess a couple on the next page.

_STR: 3_  
_VIT: 2_  
_DEX: 4_  
_INT: 1_  
_WIS: 3_  
_Points: 0_

“Wait just a sec, I didn’t assign those points!” She was sure that she’d have put some more weight in intelligence if she had. Usagi grumbled and swiped to the next screen. 

_Inventory:_  
_Rusty Short sword_  
_10x Pink Band-Aids_

She tapped on the little cartoon icon of band-aids and took the time to artfully plaster them across the gashes on her face, after which she felt a soft sort of psychological contentment, like drinking a mouthful of chamomile tea, before seeing her HP return to full. Summoning the short sword and feeling its weight in her hands, Usagi found herself surprised. It should have been childish, holding a sword like a child holds a stick and plays pretend, but in her hands, she felt dangerous and powerful, like she could wreak havoc on the unsuspecting world, and it would thank her for the trouble. 

Carefully, she descended down the stack of huge boxes, and started following the trail of cat blood.  
\--  
She didn’t have far to go. 

After only a few minutes of prowling the maze of thin alleyways, sword in hand, the splatters of blood ended at a tall, narrow building squashed between two warehouses. It looked abandoned from the outside, boards nailed over the lower windows and plaster shell rotting and falling unchecked on the concrete. The only indication that this was her destination, and not another stop on the journey, were more rabbit-eared cats strewn about windowsills, pink eyes lazily following her. 

Under their all-seeing watch, she stepped into the building.

The room she entered was only a little larger than what it appeared to be from outside, it looked like it might have once been a bar for the dockworkers, with broken bottles scattered around the floor and a dartboard clinging to the wall for dear life. Several magical cats slept on deserted liquor shelves, making the air reek of animals and filth. It was also dark, night falling fast and the boarded-up windows offering little illumination, but Usagi could make out enough to consider her next move. 

But, once again without warning, the creatures leapt to their feet and dove towards Usagi.

Fast as a hare, she managed to throw herself away from the first attacker and used her forward momentum to clumsily swing her sword into another cat while it was in the middle of its pounce. It hung impaled on her blade, then in an instant shattered into glowing sparks and shards of light that floated up and dissolved. Usagi jerked roughly away, unbalanced, her moment of distraction left her open to the next flurry of claws that tore open the flesh of her bicep, she cursed, dropped her sword, and fast, much too fast, she was overwhelmed by furry bodies and snarling teeth. 

Usagi’s eyes widened. _“If I can feel pain, then if I die...”_ A series of awful ideas, of what might happen when a player died, ran through Usagi’s mind, and to her dismay none seemed too outlandish to rule out. She blinked tears out of her eyes then kicked out at the swarm of beasts, did she really think she was prepared for this fight, armed with some cute band aids and a sword that was useless in her hands? 

With a snarl of desperation, she grabbed the cat closest to her, it’s teeth ripping through leg muscle when she pulled it off, and uncaring of the rest of the monsters tearing her apart, Usagi held the cat in one hand and punched it in it’s terrifying face with the other. Unlike before, the only thing driving her fist forward was fear, and the selfish desire to not die alone. It healed itself with a soft glow, so Usagi punched it again, again and _again_.

Just as the one before it, the cat in her hand exploded into light. For the next few minutes Usagi, pulverising the creatures and uncaring of the damage they did to her, was in a dazed state.  
\---  
When pain flooded into her, Usagi snapped back into focus and took stock. Almost doubling over from the nausea, she threw herself into a torn up booth and breathed heavily for a while. She opened her menu, and gave it a broken grin.

“You’re kidding me…”

_Sailor_Moon_  
_Level 1 Bard_  
_HP: 3/50_  
_MP: 10/10_  
_EXP: 99/100_

She could see herself peacefully floating beside her numbers. Usagi took in her ragged clothes, the skin of her fists broken and bloody, and the various bruises and bite marks that dusted her slender frame. The little girl looked in a scared way at her floating self’s eyes slowly filling with tears; the red patches on her face came and went, she could not see or hear anything, but was only conscious of the red little number three close to her weeping face, of the hurt wracking her body and the smell of animals, and could think only of how to never, _never_ let it get this bad again. 

Once, when she was a kid, she’d bruised her ankle climbing a tree. She’d hollered and wept in her father’s arms all the way home, until she was bundled in blankets and kisses and her mom promised to show her something special. 

_“Look Usagi”_ She solemnly cupped a plain band-aid in both hands. _“This is a very special band-aid passed down from your great, great, great, great grandmother. It’s said that it can instantly soak up the pain from even the fiercest of battle wounds, but only in grave emergencies.”_

_“Emergency, emergency mama!”_

And her mother would chuckle in the way that filled Usagi with love, and make a big ritual of oh so carefully applying the band-aid on her bruise. Usagi would gasp in wonder and yell that it didn’t hurt anymore! Then wiggle out of her blankets and leave her hot chocolate forgotten to run outside and play in the yard. 

Usagi was sad and silent and tried to think about warm hugs as she carelessly slapped the last of her cutesy band aids on her wounds, alone in the filthy bar. She picked her fallen sword up from the ground and couldn’t even entertain the thought of stopping here; she’d come too far to have to start again someplace else. 

_‘Still’_ She thought with a sigh. _‘Maybe it’d be smarter to quit while I’m ahead.’_

On a second thought, Usagi picked put her sword back in her inventory and picked up a broken bottle from the floor, holding it by the neck. She stood straight and proud, and stalked up the stairs behind the bar to the second level. 

On reaching the shabby bedroom she wasted no time lunging at the cat closest to her with her bottle, they were slightly bigger than the ones below, but it only took a few jabs to eliminate the first one. In the instant it died, a harsh blue light exploded around Usagi, and two menus opened of their own accord.

_“Congratulations! Level Up!”_  
_“Spell Slot Unlocked!”_

Ignoring the distractions, slowly, Usagi inched closer to the next cat, it looked her in the eyes and retreated with equal speed, to her surprise the other two monsters didn’t try and pounce on her, they just studied her with blankly assessing eyes. This one didn’t want to go out without a fight though, it snarled and leapt around the room, trying to get a slice in while her back was turned, Usagi put her back to the wall and summoned the sword from her menu as quick as she could; the cat made a leap for her neck; but just in time Usagi ducked and thrusted the sword upwards, beheading the beast. 

After that, she made short work of the last two, and opened her menu.

_Sailor_Moon_  
_Level 2 Bard_  
_HP: 130/150_  
_MP: 10/10_  
_EXP: 167/200_

She swiped across the screens again, until she came upon a new one.

_Spell Slots_  
_[Empty]_

Tapping on the ‘empty’ slot gave her a long list of various spells, with numbers labelled ‘cooldown’ next to them. 

“I… I don’t know what any of these mean. How’s viciously mocking a monster going to help me?” In the end she picked ‘Dancing Lights’ because it sounded nice. 

_Spell Slots_  
_[Dancing Lights]_

This time when she tapped it four white balls of light appearing in front of her, illuminating the dark room. Usagi hadn’t realised just how dark it’d gotten, it took her eyes a minute to adjust to the new light.

“Oh.”  
\----  
Ascending to the crisp night air of the rooftop, sword in one hand, broken bottle in the other, Usagi came face to face with the ugliest creature she’d seen so far. The monster resembled a horse sized rabbit, but this one had a golden hoop hung from each floppy ear, and most remarkably, was alone.

Without hesitation it let out a bestial howl and charged toward her. 

Jumping away from the monster at the last second, Usagi hurled her bottle at it’s back, managing to draw first blood, and summoned her menu so that when it turned around it face her she cast _[Dancing Lights]_ in it’s eyes, praying that her memory was right.

_Usagi was napping in the elementary school courtyard during lunch, Naru was over by the vending machine getting them both juice. It was criminally hot, but the sun felt good on her skin._

_“Usagi chan!” Cried a voice._

_Bleh. Nerd alert._

_“Usagi chan, Usagi chan! Check out this book I got from the library!”_

_“Beat it Umino!” She whined with her tongue stuck out._

_Still, Umino stuck around and regaled her with all sorts of useless animal facts while she tried to tune him out and keep resting. However, when he got to the cute animals Usagi couldn’t help but listen in._

In the pitch black night on the warehouse rooftop, the creature squealed and reared away from the intense brightness searing its pink eyes.

Usagi stood tall, controlling each sphere of light. “Albino rabbits have eyes that are sensitive to sunlight, and I guess whatever you are isn’t so far off from a rabbit, neh?” 

With confidence oozing off of her, Usagi ducked and dodged around the giant creature, slicing gouges with her sword in both hands, while simultaneously positioning the floating lights to keep the rabbit-cat blinded. A few times she wouldn’t move the lights in time before the monster lunged, forcing her to abandon her attacks and gain some distance, but throughout she kept an iron grip on her sword, _‘I won’t let my first battle happen again’_ she swore. 

After what felt like hours of weaving and slashing, Usagi charged forward and thrust her blade deep into the stomach of the monster. 

With sparks and shards of light illuminating her golden hair; her sword broke.

Usagi’s hands suddenly gripped nothing, her pupils became pinpricks as she looked into the face of her death. 

Then, just as jarringly, the monster’s HP caught up with itself, and it erupted into a firework show of sparks. 

She sunk to the ground on weak and shaking legs, face buried inches deep into her palms, shielding her from the triumphant illumination of her level up. Finally when she looked up at the night sky, there was nothing but her glowing lights and the moon to see her tears. 

“Damn it.” She clenched her teeth, “Too close, goddamn it.” letting herself weep freely.

She might have stayed there, crying profusely and unconsciously uttering gentle, piteous and childlike moans, if a little glass marble hadn’t rolled and touched her leg. 

“I guess monsters actually do drop stuff.”

On the floor near her were also two golden hoop earrings and a wad of cash. Disinterestedly, she gathered up her spoils and held the marble in her hands. A menu appeared.

_Use item [Familiar]?_  
_Y / N_

“Maybe it’ll heal me.” Usagi whispered with a sniffle.

She tapped ‘yes’ and the marble bloomed with soft golden light, leaving a chubby black cat with a crescent shaped bald spot on it’s forehead in Usagi’s arms. It gracefully jumped to the ground and turned to face her.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance Sailor_Moon. I am the familiar, Luna, at your service.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lunas here, finally we can have some mf dialouge,,, 
> 
> I've got exams from now till like december so updates will be slow, but the power of procrastination is strong,,  
> make like a tree and leaf a comment,, shout out to Johnny_Eldritch your comment was like 80% of my motivation

**Author's Note:**

> my lizard brain runs on comments and kudos  
> please,,, i need that good brain power


End file.
